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21
Kate stoodnext to her brother, waiting for Miguel to walk down the aisle. They’d toyed with several formations, one of the many decisions Aiden had been loathe to make. Should they both stand next to the officiant? Should Aiden walk down the aisle or Miguel? Should they walktogether?
They were questions Kate would have asked in her brother’s place too. There was nothing wrong with tradition — as long as it didn’t come at the expense of progress. Like so many things, Kate was learning how to celebrateboth.
She didn’t know how Aiden and Miguel had settled on the current arrangement — Aiden standing at the head of the flower-lined aisle created by two groups of chairs, Miguel preparing to meet him at the edge of the cliff overlooking the cove — but somehow, like everything since the shooting, it feltperfect.
Maybe that was the secret, a balance of old and new, a willingness to honor the past and look toward the future, to let go of the things that didn’t work and keep trying for things thatdid.
Her eyes traveled over the crowd gathered to celebrate her brother’s wedding. Unlike weddings of old, there was no bride’s side, no groom’s sides. Their families were intermingled: Miguel’s parents and grandparents and siblings from Cuba and Florida and Georgia, Beth and their mom and a handful of other Walsh friends and family from around the country, Julia and Ronan (holding a squirming John Thomas on his lap), Nick and Alexa, holding hands and looking happy and hopeful under the early November sun, Thomas Murphy sitting next to Elise, who stared out over thewater.
And Declan, sitting close to the aisle seat so he could encourage Griffin as he carried the rings. Her heart still beat faster when she looked at Declan, her body sparking with the secret knowledge of what it meant to be his in every sense of theword.
What it meant for him to behers.
The day was unusually warm for November, a gentle breeze lifting her hair as the music started playing from the string quartet at the edge of the ceremonyspace.
She looked down the aisle as Griffin appeared, looking mature and handsome in his suit, picked out with the help of Aiden and Declan. His hair was freshly cut, and he carried the rings on a white silk cushion, his face somber and flushed with importance as he made his way toward the front of thecrowd.
Declan gave him a thumbs up as he passed and Griff flushed deeper. There was nothing he loved more than Declan’s approval, and Kate thought of her dad, wishing he was there to share theoccasion.
She was sure he would have approved — of Aiden and Miguel’s wedding and of Kate’s decision to let Declan back into her life. They were all growing and changing. Her father hadn’t gotten that chance, but at some point when she’d been in the hospital, recovering from the gunshot wound, she’d come to realize he would haveapproved.
He would have asked her if she was happy, and when she said yes, he would have been happytoo.
He would have been happy about all of it: that there were no more secrets, that they’d found their way to forgiveness, that they’d learned the truth about Neil, that they were finally safe and surrounded only bylove.
Declan never got the satisfaction of ending Connor Ferguson’s life, but one of the men who’d been killed in the Marblehead house the night of the home invasion had a cell phone that was eventually linked back to him. It had been enough to get Ferguson arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, although he’d quickly posted an astronomical bail and retreated to house arrest pending histrial.
The press was having a field day with everything that had been found in the discovery portion of the case — fraud and embezzlement and trading violations and even connections to an arms trafficking ring in Africa and a massive Fentanyl operation inChina.
He’d been ousted from the boards of six companies, most of his assets seized pending the investigation. Alexa said her contacts at the Attorney General’s office expected him to go away fordecades.
Declan was learning to live with it, focusing on the things they had, the things thatmattered.
Griffin came to stand next to her and she rested her arm on his shoulder. “Good job,kiddo.”
There was a pause in the music before it started up again. Then Miguel appeared at the other end of the aisle, his dark hair gleaming under the sun, his trim frame smart and elegant in a whitesuit.
He smiled at Aiden, and Aiden brushed a tear from his cheek as Miguel started towardhim.
She fought her own tears as she watched her brother’s future husband join him in front of the officiant, a pastor from Miguel’s church. She was glad she had such an up-close-and-personal view of the ceremony. No one deserved happiness more than Aiden and Miguel, and she wanted to see every second ofit.
Declan had initially suggested she bow out of being Aiden’s best woman, worried the strain would be too much for her so soon after her surgery and with the added stress of her pregnancy. She’d resisted her old impulses: to fight, to hold fast to her position, to view the discussion as a battlefield in which ground given up was victoryconceded.
She’d explained how important it was to be there for Aiden, to stand next to him while he got married, something that would have been impossible even a decade before. She’d thanked Declan for loving her so much and asked him to trust her to know what was best forher.
In the end, they’d agreed she would stand for the ceremony but stay off her feet as much as possible the rest of the day, to resist her habit of doing toomuch.
It wasn’t as hard to live with compromise as she’d thought it mightbe.
The music tapered off and she found Declan in the crowd, staring at her not with concern, but withlove.
So muchlove.
She thought about her parents, about their marriage, which had been a struggle and a trial, a joy and a triumph. She was finally starting to see it not as a failure, but as the great love story itwas.
Because love wasn’t nothing-else-matters euphoria or a lifetime of compromise andcommitment.
